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Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River regulations are not based on 'junk science' (Your letters)

2014-10-31-cattails.JPG

Two Nature Conservancy interns attempt to navigate through a wetland at NYS DEC’s Lakeview Wildlife Management Area along the Lake Ontario shoreline. This wetland system, like others along Lake Ontario, is now dominated by cattails due to stabilization of water levels under the current water level regulation plan for Lake Ontario.
(Courtesy of the Nature Conservancy )

The current plan has conferred millions of dollars per year in benefits to shoreline property owners, and yet, the pain of erosion is still there.

This letter is a response to Richard Henry's letter on July 8 about the International Joint Commission's Plan 2014 to modify the approach to managing Lake Ontario water levels. An editorial on this topic was also published.

To the Editor:

The coastal ecosystem of eastern Lake Ontario supports the most extensive concentration of high quality natural habitats and diverse populations of plants and animals on the U.S. shore of Lake Ontario. The New York Natural Heritage Program has records from that area for 14 rare plants, eight rare animals and 12 significant natural communities.

That same area also features many highly valued private lakeshore properties. I am an Oswego County taxpayer who has studied and worked to conserve the coastal dunes and wetlands of Oswego and Jefferson County for over 25 years, and my work has given me ample opportunity to become familiar with many such properties and their owners.

I understand the bind many landowners are in. I don't believe regulation can solve their problem. International Joint Commission estimates that the current plan has conferred millions of dollars per year in benefits to shoreline property owners, and yet, the pain of erosion and loss of property to the lake is still there.

Plan 2014 will allow two more inches at the extreme upper end of the scale and six fewer inches at the extreme low end of the scale before triggering emergency adjustments. Dr. Douglas Wilcox has shown documentation of beach recovery under such low water conditions on the Lake Michigan shore where there is no regulation. Why would that not also happen here? Plan 2014 may confer benefits to those landowners that they have not seen under Plan 1958DD.

As a consulting ecologist, I participated in the International Joint Commission's (IJC) water level regulation study. I sat on the study groups that evaluated environmental concerns and coastal property concerns. It pains me to hear Mr. Henry dismiss as "junk science" the work of the biologists and coastal engineers who performed the research of these study groups.

The biological research was performed by well-respected senior scientists on both sides of the border. Site specific data from the eastern Lake Ontario area was gathered for the analysis. The results have been published in peer reviewed journals. Is Mr. Henry more knowledgeable than those peer reviewers that he can declare the work "junk science"? True, the peer review that IJC requested raised some concerns, which were then dealt with. That is how peer review works.

Mr. Henry reports property loss of 150 feet over the last 50 years. I know others who have moved their cottages back because of this. The coastal engineers modeled bluff recession rate in Oswego County at a meter per year. My question would be how much loss occurred over the previous 40 years of the family tenure on Mr. Henry's property, before regulation? Has he visited shoreline property on Lake Michigan where landowners live with the wide water level swings that result without the questionable benefit of water level regulation?

Last year I strongly encouraged IJC to adopt Plan 2014 and get started on the Adaptive Management Strategy so that regulation can be refined with collection and analysis of hard data on the performance indicators that underlie its development. Now IJC has recommended Plan 2014 to the governments of the U.S. and Canada for adoption. Nobody benefits from continuing to wrangle. I strongly support immediate adoption of Plan 2014.